


Scabs to Pick At

by hexagonalslugs



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Mindfuck, Psychological Trauma, Vague AU, hallucination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexagonalslugs/pseuds/hexagonalslugs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when a man can hold himself together. Just as often, there are the times he cannot help but watch himself fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A State of Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Post ACIII, vague kind of AU. Spoils (or will spoil) basically everything, and references across all of the games released for Playstation. Not really beta read or edited, perhaps more effort will be put forth in the future, but this was something I needed to get down.  
> May or may not be more in the future, apologies in advance.

                There are times when a man can hold himself together. Just as often, there are the times he cannot help but watch himself fall apart.

                Desmond was finding that more often than not, he could only stare while he crumbled into a terrible abyss. He could only sit there, feeling nothing as he picked himself apart. A piece of Syria, a piece of Firenze, a piece of Britain, the frontier, of the Farm, and at the end, he would be nothing but a raw, bloody mess, waiting for the pain to wake him up.

                He woke sticky with sweat, and more than anything, numb. He got up, he showered, he forgot. Like always.

                Until he heard the horses. There were gunshots, loud, like thunderclaps right in his ears. They rang, invaded and percussive. He could not run, he could not speak, but he managed to put the glass down. Autonomously, his body excused himself and carried him to the bathroom.

                Desmond did not feel better until he had retched all that his stomach contained, and then nothing but foamy bile. Shakily, he washed his hands under scalding water, scouring until his fingers ached. Still, Desmond could not forget the blood, even though he adamantly ignored the grimy mirror. He needed to shave.

                It took a week for him to actually get around to the business, and he finally faced his reflection, tensed as if he expected a killer to burst from the glass. He reached up to run his fingers across his jaw, recognized it as Desmond’s, although his stubble had become a short beard, interrupted by the scar on his lips. Leaning close to the mirror, he inspected his face. Eyes Altair, though the bags beneath them were from remembering the death of a man he never knew. Nose by Ezio, but the slight skew in the bridge was from a drunken brawl he could hardly remember the details of. Lips, the lower, Connor, fingers, thin and rough: Haytham, and Edward… in his scars.

                Desmond startled, and the fractures were gone. His reflection was whole, one ragged, tired man about to try and operate a straight razor without lather. He dropped it, and the blade clattered in the sink. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever learned how to use one. The edge was damaged now, it wasn’t like he could wait around to think of it. He grabbed the electric clippers, shaved his face and washed it. He threw on a number two and turned it on his head, hacking his hair brutally short.

                Hacking was a harsh term, it turned out well enough.

                He placed his hands on the narrow mirror after clicking the clippers into the charging slot. “Desmond. This is Desmond, right?” No one answered him. “I am. Right.” Desmond rubbed his face and turned away from the mirror. The casualties of his shave itched when he tugged on his shirt.

                Ever since the horses, since the gunshots, since throwing up in the toilet, the little quirks got worse. He was suspicious of everyone, even Shaun when he dropped by to make sure he hadn’t starved to death. Fifteen minutes into the visit, Desmond apologized, finally looking at the skinny Brit with the eyes of a man much too weary.

                He conceded, and ate the food Shaun brought, but only after Shaun ate some to show him it wasn’t made to poison him. After three months of this, and Desmond flipping his shit about it, Shaun had learned not to question his demands, and just do it.

                “Tell me,” Desmond shoved a forkful of takeout Chinese into his mouth, “about Lucy.” He liked how Shaun spoke about her, especially the story about the yoghurt.  “We never knew, did we?”

                Shaun just looked at him for a few moments. This was a development. Usually Desmond just sat and listened, ate, and gave a small smile. “Never knew what, Desmond?” He sat back somewhat when Desmond leaned forward.

                “That she was a traitor, Shaun. She lied. I trusted her. I did us a favor, killing her, even though I didn’t want to do it. I swear, I didn’t want to.” He saw the blood on his hands, but shoved another bite of rice into his mouth.

                He simply stared. “She died, Desmond, you didn’t kill her. She was in an accident, when the bullet train derailed.” Shaun could tell Desmond wasn’t listening, the way he was tapping his wrist with his fore and middle fingers.

                Desmond refocused on Shaun’s face suddenly. “Becky said it was a fire.”

                “Rebecca was right, there was a fire when the train derailed, Desmond.”

                “No.” He was not much different than a petulant child. “We were under il colosseo-“

                “The Flavian Amphitheatre.”

                “-There was a light, a time, we needed to get it, the answer. Shaun, you figured it out, the numbers.”

                “Oh God.” Desmond seemed to brighten at the offhanded admission.

                “Exactly, Shaun. Exactly!” He seemed incredibly pleased.

                He went to sleep peaceably, and had even bid Shaun a good evening before he left. Desmond hadn’t even noticed that the food tasted like ash in his mouth.

 

* * *

 

                “He’s remembering.”

                “Oh, fine observation, that one. He’s _been_ remembering, ever since he woke up! I know the look he’s got. That’s bleeding.”

                Incredulity. “He can’t be bleeding, he’s been completely rebooted, it’s as if those months had never happened. The code was perfect, Rebecca looked over it and everything.”

                “So Lucy is a fluke? He’s asked about her for weeks, a month now, if I recall, and only a day ago, told me he killed her. Today, he recounts the entire episode at the amphitheatre, and you tell me just now, ‘he’s remembering’? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I am stunned.”

                “Shaun-!”

                “Don’t cut the feed, Rebecca. I want this all catalogued and sent to Tech ASAP.”


	2. Hard Reboot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes up and remembers he's forgotten something.

                Silence was stifling when Desmond opened his eyes. He had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be awake. At first, he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself back to sleep, believing it must have been a dream. He was supposed to be in his tiny apartment, and his demon of an alarm clock should be going off soon. It didn’t, and when he cracked one eye open to check, he was still in the white room. Slowly, he came to the realization that he could not move, and panic began to set in.

                He became aware of a steadily mounting beeping – EKG, some far of slot of his mind supplied – and his panic became not only something within him, but something audible. It certainly didn’t calm him. Noticing that led him to noticing all manner of things.

                There were various straps on his limbs. The largest stretched across his torso. It might have been a little overkill, but he could feel two on his arms: one around his bicep, and another at his forearm, splaying him out. A less than controlled muscle twitch told him there were maybe two or three drip leads, in the flesh of both elbows and the back of his hand.

                Desmond couldn’t even muster the strength or coordination to twitch his fingers. Calming down to assess his surroundings was probably the worst choice he’d made so far, as he was suddenly aware of the feeding tube jammed down his throat. He was wracked by pitiful, weak gags, and the EKG began to spike again, but the beeping, to Desmond, was the Animus timer counting down to failure and-

                He blacked out.

 

* * *

 

                His skin was soaked, he was tangled in his sheets, and as his eyes opened, Desmond could have sworn he heard the skittering flicker of the Animus loading up. He felt the ghosts of IV needles in his arms and rubbed his biceps, hugging himself. “Jesus… Christ.”

                The longer he sat there, the more he turned the odd dream over in his mind, even as he felt it beginning to slip away. Desmond actually began to turn away from the entire experience, honestly a little more than weirded out. He hadn’t felt that cold since Abstergo, the first time he was dumped into the Animus. He could hardly remember the conditions, but even the second time, breaking into the facility to bring his dad back.

                Desmond realized that this was the first dream he remembered at all, and a large part of him was loathe to lose it. He launched out of bed, practically tripping on the sheets wrapped around his legs.

                Once he’d finally found something to write with, and actually sat down to transcribe the dream, he found he couldn’t draw it back up. Like every other dream or wayward thought, it was gone. Desmond was a lot less upset over the fact than he probably should have been. It wasn’t the first time, but he still couldn’t shake the eerie familiarity.

                He washed his face and dressed with the air of an automaton, simply acting out the daily roles. With each action, Desmond found that he was not calming down in the least. An uncomfortable sweat clung to his back, and the automatic actions were not so emotionless. Rather, they were rife with tense unease. He kept wanting Rebecca to pull him out.

                Pull him out… of what? He wasn’t re-living his ancestors’ memories – right. That’s what he was doing. Saving the world. He was fine, he was alive, right? Shaun always showed up when he felt like he was about to break down, but Shaun was not forthcoming. For each minute his phone didn’t ring and the doorbell didn’t sound, Desmond just felt worse. 

                He wasn’t quite sure why, but Shaun never answered his phone. Neither did Rebecca, now that he thought about it. And, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen his dad, much less talked to him. Desmond had asked Shaun, once, what felt like a long time ago, and the subject had been curtly and eloquently skirted.

                More, and more, Desmond was beginning to feel like something was horribly wrong. He didn’t feel calm as he usually did, and his memories weren’t quite matching up. “I’ve forgotten, forgotten something really big.” He sank into the couch, fingers tapping against his scalp, vaguely carding through his hair. He missed the soft, scattering noise.

                “You’re sure it wasn’t forgetting to close the door?”

                Desmond rather ungracefully flinched and flailed, pressing himself against the back of the couch. Shaun. It was only Shaun, not a threat, and his sudden appearance wasn’t cause for alarm. He felt himself wanting to fall into regular conversation – what were they talking about? He sighed, holding his head again, and Shaun continued to speak, something about planning a trip back to Europe?

                “But we’re in It- my hair, Shaun I cut my hair yesterday, it’s not short anymore. Shaun…?” Desmond pulled at his hair. “Yesterday, before you came. In the bathroom, because I couldn’t remember who I was.”

                “I… didn’t? But my shirt was itchy, I remember that, I didn’t shower after, just pulled a shirt on… you were at the door. Did you buzz in today? I don’t remember.”

                Shaun hadn’t even said a thing, not even as Desmond got up and made his way to the bathroom. Sure enough, his hair was long, and he sported Ezio’s facial hair. “Fuck, fuck fuck fuck.” Maybe there had been a few other choice words, but as they came from his mouth, Desmond didn’t care what language they were, they all pretty much expressed his feelings.

                “Shaun, aren’t you gonna say something? Make fun of me for freaking out? Who the fuck de-rezzed your- shit. That’s it, isn’t it.” Desmond jabbed a finger at Shaun’s chest. Some small part of him was slightly assured by the fact that it was solid.

                Shaun opened his mouth to speak, and Desmond grabbed up the collar of his stupid shirt, wrinkling the fabric of his cardigan… sweater, whatever the fuck it was. “No, shut up, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to who wrote you, because you aren’t Shaun, and come on, even Becca could write up a better code. You’re too slow. Should’ve been insulted an hour ago.”

                “I should’ve noticed it sooner, I mean, this isn’t the first time I’ve been comatose in the Animus. Why can’t I wake up if I’m fine? Why are you shoving me back in here?” He let go of Shaun. “Get me out, I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to forget, or remember, but it’s gonna be a lot easier if I’m awake.”

                There was no response, but Desmond was aware of the distinct lack of Shaun’s shirt in his fist. The entire avatar that made up Shaun Hastings had disappeared in a series of disembodied lines and the scratchy sound of the Animus unloading. He expected to be drawing in a gasp of breath any moment, but he was met with the white, featureless Animus loading screen. It wasn't filled with any of the reflective shards, no fractured glass data to remind him he only looked a little bit like himself, nothing to interrupt the vast expanse of nearly chromed white.

                The most disturbing part was that there was no voice to greet him. No Rebecca saying she'd have him out in a minute, no Shaun, not even the Animus' drone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ffffffreaking transitional chapters.


	3. Safe Mode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Windows failed to shut down correctly.

Desmond could not remember the last time he had a headache so earsplitting it made his fingers numb. He felt like he was being torn out of his own head, it was like every single hangover he’d ever had rolled into one. With a helping of disassociation as garnish, and the ghosts in his head would not leave until he ate every last tasteless piece of lettuce. He did not gasp, it was more like a wet cough, and there was a weird kind of familiarity to what he found himself waking up in.

The EKG beeped merrily along, and Desmond realized with a start that his eyes hadn’t even opened. They already _were_ open, and the ceiling was white. Sterile. It was cold, and it smelled like what he would place a hospital to smell like. Without all of the-

And then he threw up. All over his chest – vomit. Wonderful.

There was someone in the room now, he wasn’t sure where the door was, and he wasn’t sure if the mirrors were actually mirrors. There were two of them, but they were the least of his concerns at the moment. Foremost was the sludge he’d regurgitated. Most of it just went right back up the feeding tube, and some made it up the sides that he could taste the bile in his mouth, but aside from that, he was just glad that the slurry wasn’t being fed back into his stomach. The person taking the tube out of his esophagus was wearing a surgical face mask, the green color of that and the clothes told him ‘nurse,’ but he wasn’t sure exactly what part of him did.

Desmond swallowed against the taste in his mouth, and actually felt strange without the feeding tube. Words felt even stranger, “Where am I?”

The man – woman? – did not answer. They just noted the EKG, checked all of the feeds leading to his arm, and then checked both of the needles in his arm. It felt like he hadn’t spoken in ages. He was still getting used to how his throat worked, or rather, rasped, and missed the chance to beg any more questions of the inconspicuous nurse. Left alone again, the monitor’s beeping still sounded like the Animus counting down to failure.

He decided the headache was from the lights, and closed his eyes again. After all, they’d been open for… who knew how long. Desmond still wasn’t even sure if he was awake. He kept asking questions to the empty air, finding that better than the silence between the beeping monitor, which had crept all the way into his bones.

“You certainly are a chatty one.”

Desmond instantly did not like the sound of the voice to his left.

“You caught on before we were actually done.” On the right.

He squinted up at the ceiling, because looking both ways hadn’t granted him much of a gift. The mirrors only showed him that he could see.  “Where am I? What done. What are you doing? Who are you?” Desmond hadn’t tried pulling his arms or legs. They didn’t seem to want to respond, but for some reason, he wasn’t panicking as much as he should have.

“You ended up going down a very deep rabbit hole. Hasn’t anyone told you not to follow the white rabbit?”

Desmond groaned. He never read Lewis Carroll, but he’d seen The Matrix and he did not like the references this guy was dropping. “Can we stop with the cryptic bullshit? I’ve had enough of that and creepy space aliens to last four or five lifetimes.” He was pretty sure that more than ninety percent of his voice wasn’t his. Or maybe it was just how comically weak it sounded.

His hand was picked up, and finally he could see someone. They were… surprisingly casually dressed. After seeing the nurse, he’d expected someone in a lab coat. This was far from the sort. There were no determining features that he could make out, even though he could see the man’s face.  “Who are you.”

“You don’t even recognize your own father?”

Desmond was confused, blinking hard. He furrowed his brow as if that would help him see clearer. There was no recognition across his face. “I know what Bill looks like, and you aren’t him. Where am I?” He didn’t wait to hear the entire sentence. When it didn’t give him what he wanted, Desmond just asked again. “Where am I.” He closed his eyes, trying to piece it by ear where the second person was.

“Listen, we can’t exactly tell you that,” the still faceless voice said, and Desmond could not, for the life of him, position it. It was as if it was generated from thin air.

“You’re very disoriented, you weren’t ready to be pulled out yet. Clearly the system wasn’t stimulating enough to keep you occupied.” Desmond had yet to close his fingers around that person’s hand, and finally the hint was taken that he would not hold that man’s hand. He looked a little upset by the fact.

“You won’t bite your tongue will you?” Left-voice asked, although it was more like a bored statement.

“Do I have reason to bite my tongue?” Desmond rolled his eyes up, finding that he felt a little less numb as time went on, and he could kind of move his neck. It was nowhere near enough to try and see the owner of the honestly kind of slimy voice.

The one who claimed to be his father (who suspiciously did not press the issue) shook his head. “No, of course not. You’re just very weak right now, Desmond. You were suspended in the Animus for nearly fourteen months.”

Finally, some kind of answers. “Okay…. Okay so… I’m in an Animus.”

“Were, you were in-”

“Yeah, yeah, was, am, whatever. Point is I’m lying down in one.” It still wasn’t much of an answer, but it would do for now. “Who are you guys, then? How do I know I can trust you? I mean, you’ve been keeping me holed up in this program for a year and _not doing a very good job of it_.” Desmond fixed what he hoped was a glare at the man to his right. His fingers twitched.

The man just looked down at him with a vaguely confused expression. It almost looked forced. It didn’t look like he was going to be getting an answer. “Fine. Just tell me what you can tell me.”  And that, apparently, was a bunch of technical jargon that sounded more like science-porridge than actual English. Desmond had stopped listening to that voice, and was instead once again trying to hear other things. He should have been more concerned with what he could not hear anymore. There was no more beeping.

 

* * *

“We’re losing him. Bill, we’re losing him!”

“Lock it down, lock it down! Don’t just stare at the data, lock the sim down!” Bill was absolutely furious.  Damian was a Goddamn quack if he thought Desmond was anywhere near stable enough to be pulled out of the deep simulation, as buggy as it was. Still, it was better than straight up suspension in the system. Desmond was an important asset to both sides, even if both ‘sides’ didn’t really exist anymore. He looked up at the sound of ringing, and then down at his phone. Bill already knew who it was on the other end of the line. “Damian, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” He all but roared. The entire control room went silent.

“William, William, the situation is totally under control,” the cool voice on the phone said. Bill was still seething, unaware of the complete silence. “My team re-stabilized him, and as much as I hate to rain on your parade, we can keep him stimulated this way without risk of breaking the code again. We still haven’t finished the patch.”

Even so, each moment meant more data lost. Neither portion of the team had been able to successfully crack Desmond Miles after he’d touched the Eye. They’d brought him back from practically nary a single impulse, and they’d managed to get him to a cerebrally functioning stage. They had downloaded everything they could and did what they could to repair damaged tissue. Still, most of it had been unsuitable for re-upload, so they got creative, and it turned out that Abstergo was scarily deep in biomechanical engineering, ever since Clay uploaded himself into the Animus 1.0 memory core.

The truce was an uneasy one, but when Juno showed up on the scene, even without a way of controlling humans like cattle, because there weren’t many left, it wasn’t hard to settle them all in the palm of her hand. She had knowledge and secrets that neither party were privy to, and the only other one who had that kind of knowledge was Desmond Miles.

Bill hung up on Damian, not wanting to hear the physician’s voice much longer. They had been working at this for almost a year. Everyone was on their last nerves if they hadn’t snapped already. Even now, it seemed like everything was against them, the very universe was against the existence of human beings.

Juno hadn’t exactly shielded the Earth like Desmond believed she would. Hell, Bill didn’t even understand why he let her use him, when he, himself, had said that whatever they’d find behind that giant force field of a door would only benefit Juno. Either Desmond had learned something that no one else knew, or he had succumbed to her somehow.

Either way, a lot of people died. A lot of life was extinguished, and it wasn’t just people. Solar radiation ripped through space, and then through Earth, and then kept going. While it didn’t burn or incinerate the surface, it had catastrophic effect on the core of the planet. None of these things manifested until after everyone thought the initial threat was over. Juno hadn’t even shown up yet.

It wasn’t long before they figured out what she was waiting for.

After the first month, a lot of the globe simply resumed daily life. The seismic activity died down, Yellowstone didn’t actually erupt. Halfway through December, the tremors picked up again, and society was jostled from its lull. It wasn’t until February that radiation spikes were picked up in hot springs. Yellowstone, Fiji, volcanic hot baths, where the magma was close enough to the surface that it heated the spring water. So they conducted core drills across the globe. No one wanted to admit it, but earthquakes had become a commonality by the time spring was supposed to roll around. It turned out that a large percentage of rainfall in the northern hemisphere was irradiated, and by then, it was already too late. Water tables were contaminated, oceans, rivers, completely secluded bodies of still water.

This ruined crops, it ruined economies across the globe. That was when Juno began to offer solace, while people were beginning to exhibit signs of radiation sickness. When newborns began to exhibit symptoms.

When the entire world was beginning to look like Chernobyl, and the world itself had become poisonous. Juno had ways of purifying food, water, soil. She could protect them from radiation, even heal.  Still, millions of people died from misinformation, panic, confusion.

This was what it took to join the warring hands of absolute order and absolute freedom. A dying planet. And the most they could do was huddle in an extensive, fancy lead box, breathing air recycled by cultivated plants while trying to breathe life back into the man who had opened Pandora’s Box an entire year ago.

Bill supposed mankind had slim chances when 98% of the surface was irradiated, and the time of decay was doubled or even quadrupled by the solar flare in 2012. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for inconsistent chapter styles. And the super long explainy bit with lame pseudo-action. And any horrific errors, I seem to be forgetting sleep is a thing that exists.


	4. Water Flows Under a Patch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Code is like throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, except code is inherently not a sticky substance.
> 
> William has already said his goodbyes.

Silence was scary. Especially the silence that made it sound like there was noise, but for Desmond, there was nothing. Not even the ringing in his ears, or his pulse, and there had been plenty of times in his lives that he’d been so deathly still and quiet that his pulse sounded like right thunder. He had no idea if he was dead or alive. He wasn’t even sure if he was seeing a vast expanse of darkness or light. There was nothing but the ghosts in his head and even then, he couldn’t hear their garbled words.

Actual complete, total silence was terrifying. He wanted to wake up. Hit himself, something.

Desmond ran through ways to figure out if he was dreaming. Hands. They were really important, and were often strange in dreams with extra or missing fingers, that kind of thing. He looked down and saw nothing. He reached up and, just like he was seeing nothing, he felt nothing. Screaming sounded like a viable option, though he heard nothing, he _made_ nothing. He was alone, and there was nothing but his thoughts, just as confused and jumbled up as ever.

He had nothing to look at, nothing to distinguish himself from the other voices, and each one was beginning to sound the same, even though he wasn’t hearing them. He was thinking them. Thoughts that were and weren’t his. Desmond realized he could hear things, or at least sense something. It felt like an electrical hum, a rapid firing of a close circuit synapse.

The more Desmond focused on it, the more he realized that it was pretty much everywhere. The absolute silence wasn’t as terrifying as it had been at first, but the somehow calming sound didn’t mean he had company outside of his headmates, and they were making more sense. Part of him knew that none of them had experienced anything like this, even though it was painfully familiar.

It took some time to place, but he ultimately decided it sounded like the white, electrical noise that followed Clay’s avatar back in the Core Simulation of the original Animus. Great. So he was stuck in the _core_ of the core of the Animus without an avatar to communicate with or a simulation to exist in. “I don’t really think that’s existing at all!” Desmond shouted at the continuing hum. He wasn’t even sure if he was shouting.

At least, if he thought about moving for long enough it almost felt like he was, even if a double and triple check of his surroundings – or obvious lackthereof – assured him that he didn’t have visible appendages. He then realized how much he took having an avatar in the animus for granted. The continuous feeling of floating was making him nauseous. He hoped that after the last few eventful days he hadn’t actually thrown up or anything.

Desmond still wasn’t sure what parts of his memory he’d experienced or what parts he’d been in a simulation for. It didn’t really seem to matter since there was nothing there.

And then, he realized that the hum wasn’t regular background noise from the Core Simulation. It was a noise when, and only when, Clay appeared. Desmond didn’t know what to make of it, but it panicked him. He couldn’t focus, he couldn’t think, hell, he didn’t know which way was up, or what his hands even looked like anymore.

Something seemed to pop, and all of a sudden, it felt like there was a great pressure drained. It definitely wasn’t his apartment, and it most certainly wasn’t Animus Island, but he had a floor, he had a way to relate himself in space with X, Y, and Z planes.

The floor was solid beneath him, and he crouched down, for once glad that the ancestors in his head actually shut up. He was afraid of what he’d see if he opened his eyes, even though he wasn’t sure why or when he’d closed them.

Desmond opened his eyes and stared down at his feet, chin on his knees. He ignored the other feet he saw moving by and around him. Or, he tried to, but it was hard not to nice that there were greaves next to buckled shoes, next to bare feet, and sandals, or well worn leather boots existing right next to polished leather with lacquered wooden heels and soles.  His sneakers looked the most out of place.

Tugging them off was easy, though he couldn’t help feeling like doing so was a waste of actions, like it had been unnecessary for him to actually untie the laces and pull them from his feet. Desmond heaved a sigh, and almost didn’t notice when it felt like another bridge had been made.

As if there had been a wide gash, and it was suddenly stapled shut – or a better description of the feeling was that there had been a deep hole, and something was stretched across it to bear the weight. He couldn’t feel where they came from, or where these holes even were, or if they even existed for sure. Desmond only felt remnants of the fissures, like he’d sometimes felt the ghost of his missing finger.

Desmond shook himself and stood, forgetting the slip and the strange cracks. There was still nothing to see, none of the people who owned the feet he saw earlier. “I know someone’s out there. Someone feel like telling me what’s going on?” It wasn’t that he was hungry or fatigued, but there was just nothing really _there._

He heard what sounded like the electrical noise that headphones make when they are plugged in but there is no sound from the device. “Hello?”

He tried again. “I could really use some kind of environment here, this is really hurting my head.”

“Hello, son.” It sounded like Bill was talking through a shitty microphone. The significance of that didn’t quite click in his head.

“Bill?” Through the weird fuzz, he recognized William’s voice. Desmond looked around, still unable to see anything other than the slight change in the horizon between the floor and everything else. “Is there something I need to know here? How come you sound like a bad receiver?” He was impatient and burning with questions, and Bill seemed to be taking his crackly, sweet time. “Hey, you still out there?”

“Yes. Sorry, we just rigged this up now.”

“Rigged what up?” The pause told him there were things he wasn’t going to find out, and he huffed, opening his mouth to complain when William cut him off again.

“Microphone. You are in an Animus… of sorts. We can’t pull you out of it, you are too unstable, and none of the sims can support you for long periods of time –“

“Yeah, sorry we had to throw you into that void so suddenly.” Rebecca’s voice made him relax immediately, even if the news wasn’t exactly good news. “Basically you’re in a coma, but worse, so we’re writing some codes to patch you back up like new and get you back on your feet,” she said.

Desmond nodded slowly, or at least, felt like he was. “Okay. So the thing from before, that was a sim?”

“Yep,” Rebecca chirped.

“And before that, the whole apartment thing…”

“That too.”

“How long was I in that one?”

“Seven or eight months? Give or take a few weeks. We had to layer the simulations to keep you stabilized, but each time you broke the boundaries of the first one, it destabilized the whole thing.”

Desmond pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his eyelids. Bill was probably not happy that Becca commandeered the microphone or whatever. “Hey um, so why do you guys have to use a microphone?” He took her silence as hesitation and looked up at the endless ceiling. He decided it was more white than black. “My body isn’t lying in an Animus somewhere, is it.”

The silence stretched on, absolutely saturated. Desmond heard her take a breath. “N--” The electric crackle stopped abruptly and Desmond knew that he was alone again. The laugh out of his mouth was a little hysteric. “Our fuckin’ luck ain’t it.”

He was supposed to be dead. And now he wasn’t so sure he could ever be.

* * *

Neither William nor Damian were happy with Rebecca for usurping the microphone without warning. Especially because she’d gone and pretty much told Desmond the one thing they didn’t want him to know.

Damian had been the one who pulled the cord for the microphone. To Rebecca’s credit, she didn’t flinch under the ex-Abstergo medical examiner’s glare. “He deserves to know what’s going on,” she said. “Before you start lecturing me, I don’t really think you have a place to say anything here. You’re a doctor, you aren’t a computer engineer. Desmond is more my jam right now.”

This was actually the first time Damian Saravakos even showed up personally in the control room. His expertise was really only needed while they preserved Desmond’s body and kept it ‘alive’ long enough to download his brain. That, and the man had access to the technology they needed. There were plenty of other ex-Abstergo employees in the control room, but Damian had a serious superiority complex that didn’t seem to allow him to even breathe the same air as the Assassins.

Not to mention that their little bunker underground was also Abstergo property. He was also the only licensed medical professional, and he knew that kept him important for the more or less whole members of their coagulated team.

Bill actually agreed with Damian, and he gritted his teeth over it. Just because he’d had his position somewhat threatened.

“Look… the team and I can keep writing code, but it’s literally like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. This isn’t something I can just play back to run a bug test. It’s _your son_ I’m patching here,” Rebecca gave William a meaningful look, eyes slightly narrowed. “He’s not just a program, even if that’s what he seems to be. He’ll figure that out sooner or later, and we might have him on a totally isolated server for now, but we’re running out of space. He writes just as much code as we do, more, maybe, by thinking. A lot of it gets rewritten because it is like RAM but there are a lot of messy bits that his brain doesn’t know how to clean up because it’s not used to being contained with bit information. I mean, I’m pretty sure brains don’t store or work exactly like human brains do.” Rebecca floundered a little.

“My point is we have to move him, and telling him what is going on will only make it easier. Besides, like this…” She looked back at the computer banks, running a hand through her hair, which she still kept too short to tie back. “He has no sensory input. He’s literally just there in a void, no sound, no sight, no touch, no smell. Desmond has no way to relate himself. It’s just him and the avatars of his ancestors, and they’re running a little rampant while Desmond literally can’t feel himself.”

William drew in a deep breath. “Then move him, do what you need to. Give him a mic, give him a camera if we can dig one up. We need him functioning as soon as possible because every attempt to draw out information from the Eye has been unsuccessful.”

Rebecca almost called the man out on being inhumane, but a look at Damian and Shaun’s hand on her arm made her stop. “Will do,” she finally said, more to her keyboard than to either of the men standing behind her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapters but rapid updates.  
> I changed some tags.... and I might take some out - Lucy was more of just a mention but I'm not sure if there will be more there....
> 
> Don't you hate it when your story evolves past your plot points and you forget to re-plot? 
> 
> I think I have to add heavy sci-fi tags to this, how do tag help.
> 
> Oh and a note on Damian Saravakos. He is an actual character, though he appears in Initiates. He was the physician who deemed Desmond safe for the Animus, and after an examination of Daniel Cross, deemed Clay unstable and discredited Dr. Sung's prescription of 72 hour sessions in the Animus in favor of recommending he be sent back to the US to continue recovery.  
> Anyway, that's the actual canon bit of him.


	5. Force Quit Capacity

His brain did terrible things when it was left alone. This time, Desmond was stuck watching Lucy die in his arms. Well, she fell away from him, away from the blade on his arm, but it happened again.

And again.

And again.

She didn’t stop talking. He watched her lips. First, _Juno_. No.

Again, _didn’t_. Stop it.

Her stomach was so easy to pierce, _force_. I couldn’t.

She slid off in slow motion, _you_. Desmond caught her before she fell, but he was angry.

“So I said yes to her!”

There was blood making her lips red. _No one forced you_.

“I saw you, I knew the Siren. I knew it wouldn’t work and I-“ he cut himself off. He’d wanted to.

And he killed her anyway. Lucy’s gut was soft. It was like he’d thought he could change the course of events in the very slickness of her blood. But her _voice_ was there. Not Rebecca’s gasp or Shaun’s wordless fumbling. Lucy’s voice; _her_ words ripping into him, telling him exactly what he did not want to admit. He killed her simply because she would betray them the minute they got out of the temple. Even if the betrayal would lead to nothing. Even if Eye Abstergo would _fail._

Desmond felt guilty about it. Lucy didn’t have to die, not really. Even while every ounce of him screamed. It wasn’t even killing her that had put him in that coma. It was everything Juno suddenly poured into his mind.

He slammed his fist against Lucy’s face, not even looking down at her anymore. He already knew what her waxy lips were saying. Desmond stood, and felt more than heard the blade retract. He offhandedly wished he could have at least closed her eyes – the real Lucy, not this one that dwelled in his mind – and said something to her passing.

He turned toward the things that had thrust him into the coma. Orange and gold visions of the past, the future, all of the different paths of the future. If he pulled back far enough, he could see them converge and diverge like inorganic-organic circuits. Each branch a hairline fracture made by any and every single decision, no matter how small and insignificant.

This was _so much_ information, yet he saw it all and understood it all. He could live every scenario like this. He could see without even doing that which ones were doomed. Desmond already knew the chances they had. He’d always known.

His fingers traced idly along one of the longer golden veins, slipping a little from the blood on them. It was so funny. If he had not killed Lucy, the line never diverged from that point, even though the launch of Eye Abstergo failed. Not killing Lucy gave them no further choices. No other chances to deny the sun. He remembered Juno speaking in the temple. _A fourth, they said. An eighth, a tenth, they cried_.

Desmond looked back at his mind-haunt Lucy. She was still on the floor, if he could even call it that. “I killed you for these choices,” He told her, motioning to the absolute cluster.

“Can you believe,” he whispered, “that after all of this-“ the web of choices and paths looked like a clump of neurons this far out – “all of that guessing, absolutely no knowledge of which choices would lead to the best outcomes, we’ve actually made it to one of the longest paths?” He ran his fingers over Umar’s decisions. Altair’s, his son’s, their son’s, daughters, the ancient Syrian blood, when it met with the Italian, Giovanni, Ezio… Somehow it all fit into the path of highest percentage.

The answer was not always C, and there were often more than five outcomes or five decisions to choose. His blood was conditioned for this. His mind, planted with every seed of information he needed but what he lacked was space.

The human brain could not comprehend. It had tried, when Juno filled his cup with the map, but not the directions. Like an overburdened computer, Desmond crashed.

It had happened a second time, too. He actually stroked the little pulse in the paths. The Eye.

It saw the path, it saw the dotted line, the X that marked the spot and every single way to get there. The Eye was global knowledge, and he couldn’t remember how to get it.

And then it was all gone. Lucy’s body, her blood on his hands, even though he still felt the residual warmth. It was all that he had left of her. The image of her blood blossoming under her jacket, out from under his hand, unfurling through the perfect white of her high necked tanktop; this was all Desmond had of her, and he was plagued by it and her voice as much as he was plagued without her.

He heard his ancestors at his back, soft murmurings, he hardly even noticed the blend of languages, they were all his, all integral pieces of him. Without them he would be nothing, but with them he could never be whole. It was a poor, fragmented compromise.

 

* * *

 

Rebecca hadn’t even had time to shut down the feed. It wasn’t just white anymore, Desmond had fashioned himself some kind of avatar, it seemed. There were often scenes like this that were captured when Desmond slept in the Apartment simulation, but nothing like this. At first, she’d gasped because she instantly recognized Lucy. She knew the scene even without the backdrop of the temple around them.

Damian and William were too quiet behind her, and then, “Is this recording?”

Rebecca only nodded numbly, watching the playback as it skipped like an old CD. It was amazing and horrifying, that Desmond had wrapped his mind around the fact that he was no longer physically finite already, but what he was writing, what the program was converting into visuals was so private, she didn’t feel comfortable with the two older men standing there.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bill’s emotionless mask, but not Damian. She wondered if the acting leader of their somehow coalesced group even thought of Desmond as his son any longer. He surely wasn’t human, not exactly like the rest of them.

Miles turned and barked out an order that the room be emptied, and there was a short din while chairs were pushed back and everyone filed out without complaint. Rebecca had been too busy watching the monitor, eyes flicking from the video feed to Desmond’s code, and then back. This wasn’t skipping, nor was it silent. Impulse and curiosity drove her to plug in her headphones. She didn’t doubt Desmond noticed, but there was no tic in the code, no obvious change in the feed, but it was the only audio device she had handy. His voice was tinny through the headphones as she dropped them around her neck and cranked the volume.

A rapidly descending number caught her attention, and she made to talk, but William grabbed her shoulder firmly, having leaned down to hear better. The visuals, though somewhat confusing, jerky and graphic, were unfamiliar aside from Lucy.

The screen went white, and there was nothing else but a perfectly blank white page. Rebecca heard the hard drives spinning up, fans speeding to compensate. She didn’t even wait for the anticipated bark to restore the feed, she just pointed at the second screen, which though still displaying, had also ceased motion.

AVAIL: 0/50 PB

And he’d only been at two, maybe three petabytes before the feed began. A blinking set of numbers at the corner of the white monitor told her that the recording software was active for less than fifteen minutes. Less than fifteen minutes and Desmond had written nearly fifty petabytes of information.

“He’s used all the space. He can’t even delete data because that requires memory. If I didn’t have an unprotected server for the recording software and storage, I would lose that record.” Rebecca turned to them.

“He’s basically just written two thousand hours of songs times fifty in under fifteen minutes. Whatever it was that he was looking at there, that thing is huge, and it’s still not done, not if he’s hit capacity already.”

Rebecca was amazed. She’d been amazed when they got a hold of this much computing space at first, petabytes weren’t something that came with your regular computer. One petabyte was one thousand and twenty-four bits to the sixth power. One thousand terabytes made up a single petabyte. Most mobile networks only 30 petabytes of information a month, and Desmond had just soared over that in mere minutes, and for the longest time he never made it over two and a half petabytes. She ached to read that code, they were sitting on gold here, and it wasn’t just because the thing looked like gold.

“So he needs more space.”

“Of course he needs more space. It’s as if he realized he didn’t have the same constraints as the human brain – which we all learned is roughly 2.5 petabytes of information, because that’s where he hovered when we uploaded him fully, even with all of the missing data,” Rebecca was nearly frantic, turning her entire chair around.

 “He’ll keep trying to write more, and he’ll either crash or burn the farm we have now. And he has no backup server,” she said. It had been the first partition to go during the rapid data explosion.

“I need everything we’ve got hooked up. Best scenario would have been dumping him into Google’s HDFS, or government servers, but we obviously don’t have either of those anymore.”

She turned away from William and Damian, leaving them to their power squabbling when she was sure they would get her more space for Desmond. Really, though, Desmond could have at least tried to compress the information before vomiting it like that.

“What was…?” Damian had started to ask. Rebecca just waved her hand.

“I don’t know and we won’t know until I get that space, and I don’t mean this dinky 50PB server farm, he needs render farm stuff. The Animus database would be enough, I’d think. It isn’t as if we need all of that reference material, we have a living computer with access to the most important ancestors here don’t we?” She didn’t like talking about Desmond like he wasn’t human, like he had never been human, but it was the easiest way to get Damian to shut up.

The answer proved satisfactory enough, but he sniffed at Rebecca’s curt tone before leaving. Hopefully to make a dent in this server shortage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The human brain is actually the rough equivalent of 2.5 Petabytes of information. How much it takes to actually process what the brain processes well... that's unknown.  
> And yes, I know that a system with 0 space would lock up indefinitely. There are no computations going on right now, by all means, it is paused.
> 
> other than that, HAVE ANOTHER SHORT CHAPTER. groans. Next one should have better interaction. Maybe. Sobs.


End file.
